In 2004, Fai testified before Burton’s subcommittee. Internal KAC documents show that in just 2007 alone, he had 33 meetings with members of Congress, congressional staff, the Bush administration’s National Security Council, and the State Department. He led congressional delegations to the disputed Kashmir region, and over the years nearly three dozen different members of Congress of both parties attended or spoke at Fai’s annual Kashmir Peace Conference held on Capitol Hill. KAC’s events were even broadcast live on C-SPAN.

One thing that bought Fai so much access was that Fai and the KAC board of directors generously spread campaign contributions all over Capitol Hill to members of both political parties. However, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, the bulk of contributions by Fai, KAC’s board, and Fai’s associates went to Burton and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

That all changed on July 19, 2011, when Fai was arrested by the FBI not far from his Fairfax, Virginia home, where he had held the fundraiser for Burton sixteen months earlier. And just last month, a year after his arrest, Fai reported to federal prison.

According to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Sarah Webb Linden that was the basis for the criminal complaint, an extensive investigation into Fai’s activities showed that all of Fai’s efforts over the past 20 years had been illegally financed and directed by Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.

The FBI affidavit stated that Fai was in constant contact with his Pakistani ISI handlers: since June 2008, Fai and his handlers exchanged more than 4,000 messages.

The FBI also found that Fai and KAC had received more than $4 million from the ISI since KAC’s founding in 1990 through the use of U.S.-based Pakistani-American straw donors who would donate to KAC and receive tax deductions, and then be reimbursed in Pakistan by the ISI. This was arranged through Fai’s conspirator Fazeer Ahmad, a U.S. citizen who lived in Pakistan and was charged along with Fai in the case.

These straw-donor transactions concealed that KAC was not an independent public relations effort by U.S. citizens to advocate on behalf of the Kashmiri people, but rather an influence operation run by the intelligence agency of a hostile foreign power, one intended to influence members of Congress to shape U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan’s favor. The stated targets for much of KAC’s operations were the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

KAC’s activities didn’t have to be illegal. All Fai had to do was register his organization with the attorney general under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Doing so would have exposed the Pakistani ISI’s role in the operation, however, and would have closed most doors in Washington, D.C., to Fai and KAC.

The FBI gave Fai sufficient opportunity to come clean about his operation and its ties to Pakistani intelligence. In March 2007, the FBI interviewed Fai, who claimed he had never met anyone affiliated with the government of Pakistan.

In March 2010, the Justice Department sent Fai a letter stating that press reports in India had identified him as an agent of Pakistan, and that if true, he was required to file as a foreign agent with the attorney general’s office under FARA. In an email reply, Fai stated that KAC “has never engaged in activities on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan or any other foreign entity.”

What undoubtedly prompted that Justice Department letter was a meeting that Fai had with two of his Pakistani ISI handlers in Geneva just days before. In that March 2010 strategy meeting, according to notes of the meeting obtained by U.S. Customs officials when Fai reentered the U.S., Fai briefed his handlers on KAC’s 2010 goals and the targets of his efforts. Most notably: “E.B. [Executive Branch], State, DoD, WH [White House]; Media, Think tank; Congress; U.N.”

According to the FBI, the two ISI handlers Fai met with in that March 2010 Geneva strategy meeting were Sohail Mahmood and Major General Mumtaz Ahmad Bajwa, the then-head of the ISI’s Security Directorate, which oversees operations of several Kashmiri terrorist groups.

Bajwa had also attended Fai’s Tenth International Kashmir Peace Conference on Capitol Hill in July 2009. Also at the event was Fai’s then-ISI handler, Lt. Col. Touqeer Mehmood Butt, whose visa application noted his employer as “Pakistani Ministry of Defence, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Islamabad, Pakistan.” Among the speakers at that conference were Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA), Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY), and the ubiquitous Rep. Dan Burton, as seen in the video below:

29 Comments, 23 Threads

1.
tommy gunn

Hey lets take these “infiltration of US Government” stories one at a time. I am not interested right now in the has been Pakistani’s who have fallen out of favor anyway with Obama because they are always trying to make him look bad. I am more interested in the Muslim Brotherhood who is infiltrating our entire nation with the help of the current administration and of course the usual congressional brainless drones that protect these punks like Uma you know who and Keith Ellison. Why has the number of mosques in the USA doubled since 911? Why do most of them have radical leadership from Egypt? Why do we put up with this crap when you cannot carry a bible into these hell hole countries that generate this fanatcial scum?

So forgive me for yawning unless your mission is to fill up the air waves so we don”t actually pursue the Muslim Brotherhood story and the real threat–at least for the moment.

I remember a book published during the throes of the Cold War with the striking title, “You can trust the Communists (to be Communists)”. It seems that many politicians as well as naive adults continue to believe that people with a particular ideology can be or are different from those they regard as extreme or fringe elements to that group.

I cannot remember the arguments of the book but the title gives us a stark warning which we need to apply to the kind of people Poole writes about, “You can trust the Muslims (to be Muslims).” They are quite happy to use taqiyya, that is concealment or deception, to further their ideological and religious aims. Are the extreme, radical Muslims simply an aberration or do they perhaps reflect a consistent understanding of taking the teaching of the Qur’an to its logical conclusion?

I recall the observation of a student from a Christian family who boarded with and became a good friend to a Muslim family. He noticed that the young people, who were at first critical of much of Islam, changed their views when they married and settled down in family life. I wonder if it is not the “bad” or “disloyal” Muslims, the ones who do not take their Qur’an seriously, that non Muslims find to be decent people? It appears that those who are faithful to the Qur’an are actually those who want Sharia Law with all its horrible practices.

Some will jump on my comments and say that religion is the problem in our world and that secularism is the solution. Others will say that religion is a good thing and advocate tolerance towards Islam. Both ignore the real problem. Good Muslims, “good” because they rigorously adhere to the Qur’an and the teaching of Islam, are the most dangerous and biggest threat to those who reject their teaching. In contrast the most dangerous “Christians” are those who abandon the teachings of the Bible. Those who take to heart the teaching of Jesus Christ strive eagerly to love God wholeheartedly and to show a caring and compassionate love towards their neighbors and even their enemies.

“…Dr. Fai begins a two-year imprisonment term on July 10, 2012 for violating certain tax laws related to non-profit organizations. On March 30th he was sentenced to two-year imprisonment for conspiracy and violations of certain tax laws. Although initially charged under the FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] as an unregistered agent of Pakistan, Dr. Fai was never convicted on this allegation, which seemed clearly intended to support negotiations the U.S. and Hillary Clinton were engaged in with India at the time, according to Paul Barrow, Director of United Progressives and the Director of American Affairs for the International Council for Human Rights and Justice.

During the hearing Dr. Fai’s attorney Nina Ginsburg stated: “Judge, I think (Assistant U.S. Attorney) Mr. Kromberg’s arguments to the Court are appalling. [Federal investigators] have a lot of words that were captured in intercepts, 20 years of intercepts, hundreds of thousands of interprets, and **Mr. Kromberg cannot stand in front of this Court with one example of a statement, a public statement by Dr. Fai, a writing by Dr. Fai, a position taken at a conference he sponsored, not one, not one word, that is anything that could be characterized as propaganda for the Pakistani government.”***

He took a plea deal, which is why the FARA charges were dropped. If you read the FBI affidavit, there’s no doubt that they could have proved their case if they decided to move forward. The USG wanted this case to go away, and the State Dept and CIA actively obstructed the FBI prior to his arrest.

As for his attorney’s statements, that’s a flat-out lie contradicted by the 26 page Statement of Facts (linked in the article) that her client signed as part of his plea deal where he admitted he was the ISI’s stooge. The FBI said that 80% of Fai’s statements were verbatim from the statements prepared by his ISI handlers based on the thousands of emails between Fai and his handlers.

The fact remains that Fai is in federal prison and he fully admitted to his crimes.

Thank you for this one, buried in plain view for years. Lots of blanks to fill in, BUT…

Congressional Pakistan Caucus…annual Kashmir Peace Conference on Capitol Hill…twenty years of infiltration. WTF, WTFF? The FBI did us proud here, by all accounts.

Ding-dong Dan Burton’s defense was ‘Who knew?’, which in the real world doesn’t even add up to plausible denial — and is a good measure of arrogance, contempt, vanity and credulity. Starting point: You should have known, you dope.

Off with his head. And the heads of all his horses.

Yes, as poster says, you can indeed ‘trust Muslims to be Muslims’. And, at the bottom of the barrel, you can trust Pakistanis to be Pakistanis. For some reason, nearly one billion Indians are allowed to say so regularly, but we aren’t. How racist.

Dan Burton is clean. If anything sinister happened, it happened outside of his knowledge, period. The larger question goes more to the idea of loose campaign donations and where they come from. Republican and Democrat politicians have to raise significant campaign funds to be elected or reelected. It’s clear that anyone who has the mind to donate with the intention of gaining influence can. Of anyone in Congress, Burton can’t be bought. This isn’t Abramoff. But someone went to prison and rightfully so.

Clean? You can’t possibly know that. What we do know is that many don’t share your whitewashed view of Burton. He’s a thirty-year trougher with plenty of dirt stuck to him, though he passes the country-club test that soothes some: former real estate and insurance salesman, Freemason, hated Clinton, etc.

But remember: this is the pontificating toad who railed about moral purity during the Clinton/Lewinsky mess who then turned out to have had at least one extramarital affair that produced a child; who helped screw up the Whitewater investigation by relying on bad/untrustworthy evidence; who put his daughter on the campaign payroll as ‘office manager’ and promptly paid her more than $140k in campaign funds; and (personal favorite) who said “I take full responsibility for all the mistakes” during the Webster Hubbell doctored tapes scandal — and then fired a staff member instead of resigning himself. Great guy, huh?

One can go easily go on, but the point is clear. The good news, AFAIK, is that he’s sticking to his plan to retire asap, so he’s about to become irrelevant — unless, perhaps, faced with a plea bargain. What, exactly, does the FBI know?

You seem to believe, or at least hope, this is all moot and the door is closed. We’ll see.

You know we have been going through some quite difficult times w/r to our supply lines for Afghanistan through Pakistan over the past year or so. It seems to me that instead of putting this guy in jail we should have used some “smart diplomacy” to make use of back channels to help resolve the supply lines issues. But maybe that’s me just using simplistic, red neck thinking.

I can understand why Obama/Hillary haven’t held them to account, but Bush?! He knew better!

Pakistan needs to pay for Al Queda and the deaths of our citizens and soldiers. Wazeristan should be a free fire zone where the ROE are anyone with a weapon dies, and the CIA should be crawling all over Pakistan. If they get in our way, they need to pay, hard.

We should be strengthening our ties with India very publicly.
The Paks need to be put in a very tight vice.
Their duplicity needs to be punished severely.

The lack of direct action against pro Al Queda Pak elements show just why Obama is such a disaster as commander in chief. Same goes for clueless Hillary.
It’s embarrassing how incompetent these two fools are.

AIPAC takes neither money nor direction from Israel. Thus they don’t fit the definition of foreign agents under FARA and don’t need to register. Just because you don’t agree with the position of this organization advocating for a strong US-Israel relationship doesn’t make them foreign agents.

All you need do is look at their Wikipedia entry to see that assertion doesn’t hold water. They were founded as a firewall for the American Zionist Committee, which *was* required to file under FARA. An Air Force Colonel has gone to jail for passing secrets to AIPAC employees for crying out loud. Usually, spies are considered “foreign agents.”
I don’t think they’re the worst offenders, as Israel is at least ostensibly an ally, though it is grotesque that they get away with it in broad daylight.
China (China Open Shipping company) and Saudi Arabia (everyone standing next to Bandar bin Sultan) are arguably worse. The list is long: Georgia runs a particularly ham-fisted operation, Taiwan is pretty overt sometimes. Even our friends the South Koreans have dirty hands.

We all know of the infiltration by the Islamist, but how many know what Islam truly is and what they intend? Everyone should read John Daniels book, ‘THE COMING: A TRUE STORY OF HORROR’, @ amazon.com. though written as a work of fiction, I fear this is indeed a prophetic vision of our future.

Of course Burton insists that “he knew nothing.” Just look how far his cronies in the Republican leadership were willing to go with Congresswoman Bachmann and the other 4 signatories when they requested a review of Muslim Brotherhood penetration inside the USG in just the same way as Pakistani ISI (and Turkey,and …). Easier to disgrace concerned (and correct) colleagues.

They work hard to ensure that they “know nothing” so they can sleep at night taking money by those who seek to penetrate them in furtherance of undermining our national security. And they are penetrated (yes, paint the visual picture).

After all, its not like we have troops in combat in that part of the world … oh, yes, I guess we do. As with Pakistan, so with the Muslim Brotherhood in America. Its easier to trow your fellow Members to the wolves to ensure you never know than to have a f@%$-ing clue. Just listen to the YouTube clips. As they say in Blazing Saddles, their tongues are as smooth as a $20 …

So seductive! Just like the MB! How is it that the was allowed to catch the Pakistani’s? As the new counterintelligence standard is that “nice” overcomes all evidentiary questions regarding being under foreign influence or engaging in espionage, one wonders whether the FBI could pull it off since the new “Huma” standard. Remember, when senior Republicans viciously attacked Bachmann, those knifing her in the back had nothing more concrete to say abut Huma than that she was “nice” – you know, just like the Pakis and the MB. Come to think of it, maybe they don’t want to know how duplicitous they have been and that IS why they want to throw peers under the bus. What’s national security when there is PAC money to be had!

The corruption is in precisely the fact that they take the money having also taken active measures not to know! Bachmann shows how far they will go to ensure blissful ignorance. I just hope, for their sake, that the survivors of killed American troops don’t do the math on this!

For the last 20 Years!!! That means 1992, years before Pakistan tested and compiled their A Bombs. And unlike Iraq and Iran, the U.S. public didn’t know anything about it before hand. Now we are engaged in Pakistan to protect those A Bombs from falling into terrorist hands. Any connection?? Mr. Poole, I know you are very careful (and accurate) in your reporting but there appears to be a lot more worth pursuing. Thank you for your efforts so far.

Pakistani, in this case is synonymous with muslim, which is synonymous with terrorist. Any intrusion by the obvious America hating, Osama sheltering, foreign aid begging Pakis should be embarrassing enough for us to see a host of resignations in our so called security people.
But it’s easier to kill the story than find a job if you’re a total incompetent.

As the story goes: “All Fai had to do was register his organization with the attorney general under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)”.
Whatever happened to the old “equal protection under the law” concept?
Why isn’t the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act(FARA)? There is no doubt they get their marching orders from Israeli leaders. If you don’t realize this you undoubtedly believe in the tooth fairy and the easter bunny!

The ISI is considered by spy geeks as the #1 intelligence agency on the planet. ISI has never been penetrated.

We convoy massive amounts of material through Pakistan to support our troops in Afghanistan. We need to deal with the Paks.

The spy world is incredibly murky. We got a small look into it with Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson affair/Yellow-Cake affair. Everybody chooses the version of the facts that most suits their objective/point-of-view.

Back in the 70′s Morris Childs was big hitter in CPUSA. Every year he would go to the Soviet Union to confer with Soviet Leadership and advise them about the inevitable decline of Capitalism in the USA. The only trouble was that Morris Childs was spying on the Russians for the FBI. Morris gave a peek behind the scenes to US politicians who were negotioating with the Russians.

Could Mr. Fai be a double agent getting a light 2 year jolt at “club fed” as to square things up for past transgressions.